


oh, trouble, trouble

by floatingsumaru



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Body Horror, Character Death, Horror, IwaOi Horror Week, Lovecraftian, M/M, Sexual Content, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 06:50:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16470815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floatingsumaru/pseuds/floatingsumaru
Summary: From the destroyed expedition journals only two details remain:The winter storms were scheduled to hit their Antarctic research station in five days.Oikawa Tooru is in love.





	oh, trouble, trouble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PlumTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea/gifts).



> Written for Day 2 of [Horror Week](https://iwaoi-horror-week.tumblr.com).

 

 

Tooru wakes up to the cold again.

Tooru pulls on a grey wool sweater over his thermal gear.

Tooru heats up some leftover rice for breakfast and methodically butchers a thick slab of steak. Dark blood drools from the cracked wedges of marrow onto the wooden cutting board, tendrils of a new stain spreading out to take root in the grain. The cleaver thunks into the wood with a dull sound that vibrates up his wrist; irritation flares suddenly, viciously in his palms.

 _Always so annoying._ Tooru takes a steadying breath. A plastic cutting board would have been better. He'll have to remember to look for one in the storage shed.

The meat is still fresh and smells almost sweet, like milk; he wrinkles his nose as he looks at the single egg cracked into the rice for himself. Mornings have remained the absolute worst no matter where in the world he ends up for his climate research, and his appetite has already withered under this little cloud of tiny aches dripping through the cracks of his day. He leaves the quickly cooling breakfast behind on the counter, bowl of steak in hand to bring back to the small bedroom he shares with Iwaizumi. For all that Iwa-chan grumbles like an absolute brute whenever Tooru insists on silly romantic gestures, there’s always been a boyish little grin that welcomes breakfast in bed on sunny Saturday mornings, as couples do, even here at the edge of the world. Tooru can’t help his own tiny smile that slips out from behind his teeth.

“All the beauty sleep in the world won’t help you, you know!” Tooru thrills it like the wake up it’s meant to be, but he gently nudges the door open with his socked feet anyway; Iwaizumi really can be such a beast in the morning.

The last of the pale summer sun leaks in white and brilliant from the narrow window, pooling around the lump nestled amongst the pillows flung haphazardly in the middle of the bed where Tooru had left him. If a pile of blankets could move like the slow quake of the earth, it would be like this, dragging every inch around itself until it shifts two eyes toward him; a muddied green, unblinking. Tooru’s smile flickers but then Iwaizumi’s mouth adjusts into something at least neutral at the offered bowl.

Tooru might be the one who’s freezing cold at all times, but it’s Iwaizumi who had adapted the worst out of all them to the Antarctic conditions. No matter how many multivitamins or iron tablets he downs with his meals, he’s always anemic, a little out of sorts with every gust of bitter wind that rattles the walls of their research station.

There’s the sound of static coming from somewhere in the sheets; Godzilla roars from the screen of a tablet, tucked into the folds, followed by the familiar sounds of special effects, and something like relief floods hot and cold all at once into Tooru’s stomach. This is a comfort he knows. This is something he’s always known.

“My Iwa-chan still loves Godzilla almost as much as he loves me!” He can’t clamp down on the giddy thought fast enough and it uncoils inside him like butterflies, furious and fluttering down into his toes, and he can’t shake them out fast enough.

Iwaizumi makes quick and quiet work of his steak, eyes never leaving him. So it was one of those mornings, then.

 

 

 

 _Let them know Iwa-chan is definitely a summer,_ they would later find in a scribbled note taped to the empty folder of Oikawa Tooru’s expedition report. _Let them know that he was slow to get used to the cold here. Let them know that it never affected his research, that he performed all the work assigned to him with exceptional diligence and attention to detail. Let them know that when he laughs it’s like we’re home again._

_Let them know Iwaizumi Hajime saved the expedition._

 

 

  

Blood still dots Iwaizumi’s fingers, tracing a red constellation from where he grips Tooru’s hips, to where he spreads him so easily over him, to where he presses a thumb slowly against the rim. Tooru still has his sweater on and he’s sweating up a storm, he’s so hot under all that wool that Iwaizumi hasn’t bothered to take off of him, but he doesn’t want to stop even for a second; he just wants to burn everything up from the inside.

“Tooru, you’re ready,” Iwaizumi finally says, the first thing he’s said all morning, and Tooru shivers as his voice rumbles dark and deep through his bones. Tooru’s cock aches, untouched. He’s usually the one who makes Iwaizumi come undone like this, fingers deep and spit shiny where it hasn’t even had a chance to dry yet he’s so eager; but they’ve adapted in this, too.

Lube runs liberally down the inside of his thighs, rose-tinged from Iwaizumi’s messy fingers, and drips all over the warm expanse of flushed skin under him. Iwaizumi had been slow and thorough, as if mapping him all over again, inside and out, and Tooru _wants_ _._ “That’s so nasty, Iwa-chan,” Tooru tries to play it off teasingly, but it comes out all in a rush, a single breath. “Hajime,” stutters out, and “ _Hajime_ _,”_ whined again as Iwaizumi pulls him all the way down onto his cock with a grunt.

Too much, too full, too suddenly; everything is pulled tight and raw and Tooru’s eyes snap shut against the overwhelming feeling of it. _Don’t move, don’t move_. But the ache of being spread so completely, sparks something in him so hot it’s like Iwaizumi is radiating chills through him. Like the ice is right there in the room with them.

But he’ll warm him up. His silly Iwa-chan who handles the cold even worse than he does.

Iwaizumi starts to move.

“Ahhh… like _that_.” Fingers curl tight around the slope of Iwaizumi’s shoulders, landscape he could navigate in the dark, old childhood scars he can count by heart. His Hajime. The Hajime he’s always known. In the dark behind his eyes, starbursts reeling, chest tight, it’s like everything is being touched by Iwaizumi, all at once, forever. Safe.

“I love you, Tooru,” Iwaizumi says quietly, the words a shudder that skips across his heart and follows the jerky movement of his hips. Here where white snowlight flickers over his eyes squeezed shut as tight as he can so it can’t touch him, he’s safe, _safe_ , and the warmth of it spreads inside him so quickly it tightens everything to breaking, and it’s just enough for him to spill messily in milky white lines across Iwaizumi’s stomach.

Tooru keeps his eyes closed for just one moment longer. Wants to live in in this little golden glow like it’s his whole entire world, held in place by Iwaizumi’s hands gripping his hips and his cock still hard inside him, and he tries not to think of the blood he had seen stick so sweetly to the back of Iwaizumi’s teeth.

 

 

 

“Tobio-chan hasn’t bothered me with his stupid data even once this morning,” Tooru huffs as he starts the layering process to go outside. His hair is still a little damp from the shower, and sticks cold and clammy to the back of his neck; he shivers like someone just walked over his grave. Maybe mentioning Kageyama was calling down bad luck but sometimes he just can’t help himself.

Iwaizumi looks up as the wind bangs against the outermost door and Tooru groans. “Iwa-chan, I don’t want to go out there. Don’t make me!”

“Better you than me.”

The snow goggles hit him full in the back of the head. Tooru squawks loud and indignant and almost, almost manages to hear Iwaizumi laugh amidst the howling of the wind. The sound of it has always been such a summer sound, warm and full and dipped in the golden shadows stretching through a slow June afternoon, and his heart swells so much it’s like he doesn’t feel the first bite of the Antarctic air when he ventures out at all.

 

 

 

_We arrived on November 23, 20xx, just as the last of the winter front clears, and find only climatologist Oikawa Tooru at the research station. He is unwilling to give us more details about the rest of his team, or perhaps unable to, except to pull me aside and privately hand me a notebook that had once belonged to my colleague and partner Kageyama Tobio._

_Of Oikawa’s own research, very little remains but what we could salvage from the incinerator._

— from the testimony of Tsukishima Kei, biologist

 

 

 

The temperature has dropped so precipitously out on the ice shelf that they have to do everything by hand; this close to winter, the readings have started to show huge aberrancies, and Tooru would sooner die than be known for anything less than award-winning, scientific precision.

Retrieving ice cores takes longer than usual because Kageyama hasn’t tagged along today, and Tooru lets himself miss the brat for just the smallest moment. But the cranky moan of the hand drill biting deep into the frost calls up every memory of Kageyama trying to yell questions at him through the cracking ice and the tinny, thin air out here, and he feels the onset of a headache just thinking about it.

 _Stop screaming, Tobio._ The ice core he’s dragging up is constellated with dark grey particles and Tooru can’t stop the thought rattling like sharp pebbles in his head. _Please stop screaming._

The ice crumbles a bit under his fists. It’s better this way. It’s always been better this way. He doesn’t need the help, and if he did, he’ll always have his Iwa-chan.

Tooru walks past the the outdoor incinerator on the way back and notices a scattering of grey — it’s definitely a hazard, likely to blow back and taint everything. The Antarctic chill has already crept under his ribs, further and faster than he’d like, and all at once the cold freezes deep inside his lungs. He had been so careful. The hiss of breath between his teeth cuts ice into this mouth.

He cleans up, makes sure to check if there’s anything left, if there was anything he’s missed this time, but there’s nothing but the ice swept clean and white like the bleached bones of the earth. The wind whistles sharp and clear through the camp, almost like summer singing, and when Tooru looks out past the knife’s edge of the glacier rising against the sullen sky, silent and forbidding and peerless, he feels immensely lonely and relieved all at once.

 

 

 

The storage shed sits a few steps away from the incinerator and Tooru hesitates. The wooden cutting board is fine for now.

 

 

 

“We’re making good process on the climate model!” Tooru smiles. Iwaizumi tracks him across the lab with dark eyes.

“When do the winter storms come in?” Iwaizumi asks instead. “Tooru,” he adds, teeth gripping onto the sounds of his name, moving them around in his mouth like they didn’t quite fit yet. Tooru knows that Iwa-chan sometimes feels embarrassed, but why did it matter out here when it was just the two of them?

“Weather reading says five days.” A pout hangs off his mouth. “Iwa-chan should know that!”

It was something that was drilled into all of them — the arrival date to the research station and the seasonal turnover. Winter means being locked under the full weight of the ice, nothing but a cold and endless dark unlike anything on this Earth. Contact with the main research station would be limited until summer came again, and caught in the swell of white shadows, it would feel like they were the last two people alive. _Just me and Iwa-chan , and sometimes Godzilla can come along, too, I guess. That doesn’t sound so bad._

Iwaizumi nods. “We’ll be ready in five days.”

 

 

 

The Miyagi research station, a small outpost of the Japanese Antarctic Division, is located on a remote ice shelf tucked against a mountain range, carved into deep cliffs by the sea. It once housed those who were studying the emperor penguins that lived there, but the colony’s disappearance means it was now used mostly by climate scientists; the only wildlife biologist in their current team was Kageyama, sent with them to observe whether shifting ice and changing weather patterns had resulted in a disrupted breeding season.

“Bird sex is the most action he’s ever seen in his life,” Tooru had smirked when they had first arrived. Hajime had punched him in the arm for that, but it was almost worth it to see the flush spread across Kageyama’s wind-burned cheeks.

“You’re such an ass, Shittykawa.”

“He’s probably not wrong.” They hear Kunimi snicker quietly to himself. Kageyama whips around and glares at him.

Some people adapted better than others. The snow glare gives Kunimi headaches. Having to work with someone else’s protocols makes Kageyama sullen. Tooru hates the cold. Hajime hates the cold, too, but probably hates Tooru’s ice cold feet against his legs under the blankets even more.

“Then stop making me do all the ice core samples!”

The completely unimpressed look that Hajime hits him with pulls a smug smile from Tooru's mouth — he knows perfectly well that he was the one who assigned himself that particular task. Who wanted to help Tobio look for frozen bird crap or whatever he did, anyway? He was busy enough sifting through sea level data with Kunimi, who was, Tooru always liked to smile beatifically, a wonderfully helpful kouhai.

Hajime just snorts and whips his extra snow goggles at Tooru before he heads out with Kageyama, and Tooru watches as their backs disappear into the white shadows pooling under the glacier.

 

 

 

_Initial examination of the research station revealed that the main building and infrastructure had only suffered the expected amount of damage incurred during the winter season._

_Of note, however, is what appears to be the destruction of a few minor outdoor installations — notably, the storage shed. From the scattered path of grey ash we found, my peers had hastily, and rather unscientifically, concluded that it must have been a fire that accidentally spread from the incinerator._

_I remain unconvinced._

— from the testimony of Tsukishima Kei, biologist

 

 

 

Tooru wakes up to the cold again.

Tooru pulls on a faded sweatshirt emblazoned with Tokyo University over his thermal gear.

Tooru slips out from the bedroom and crosses the empty halls of the station. Listening to the wind keen against the windows in a strangely regular rhythm is like waking up to your own funeral; the wailing of grief, the lonely peal of a monk’s bell humming so deep into your skull you started to vibrate with it, too. He tucks his hands under his arms to keep them from shaking.

 _It’s just the cold_ , he thinks, and shivers. Weather like this is too dangerous to go outside in, so he goes to the lab and sits against the wall with his legs pulled up tight, and waits.

The crying always starts soon enough.

If Tooru was honest with himself, he had no idea what an emperor penguin sounded like before he came here, and, closing his eyes with nothing but the stark honesty of the Antarctic wind stripping him bare even as he shelters on the floor, he's not sure this is the sound they should be making, either. The warbling is as raucous and as familiar as it has been in the last few weeks, but it's when it dies down into soft, mournful chirping that makes him wish he had grabbed a pillow to put over his ears. It's a young sound, terrible and plaintive. It grips his heart in ice and spreads chills all the way down. He's missing Iwa-chan's warmth already, but Iwa-chan needs his sleep, needs so much of it, and Tooru still has a long winter ahead of him.

And behind it all, the wind continues to howl.

 

 

 

Kunimi has always been a little lazy, but Tooru huffs anyway, disappointment stinging a little as he sifts through the lab reports — the gap is growing in Kunimi’s data entries. Though, Tooru supposes, the sea has been locked in ice and there would be no spikes in the numbers until spring.

Tooru smiles charitably. Kunimi did need his sleep, too.

 

 

 

 _There’s nothing Oikawa-san can’t solve!_ When Oikawa Tooru’s tablet is later submitted for examination, only this deleted memo is found in his notes. The list attached to it, once cross-referenced with shipment manifestos, it is discovered to be of all the proteins in food storage, with two unidentifiable additions labeled simply as _Meat 1_ and _Meat 2_ _._

 

 

 

“There’s nothing Oikawa-san can’t solve! Just wait right here!”

Tooru flashes Iwaizumi a v-sign as he pulls his scarf into place. Normally, he would wait until the warm air currents came down from the mountain so it’s more bearable to venture outside, but Iwaizumi has started to look anemic again — gaunt and dark-eyed and jittery at the tips of his fingers. Tooru had watched them claw into the sheets and his heart had thundered in his ears much too loudly for him to sleep that night.

But the winter winds have stilled at least. The sun lies low and hazy against the ice, spilling long grey shadows over the path between him and the storage shed; and the shadows move slowly, so slowly, and Tooru closes the station door behind him with the bile already rising in his throat.

_They’re harmless. They can’t hurt you. They’re just stupid, stupid birds—_

It’s small relief that the penguins aren’t crying today. But Tooru thinks maybe the silence is worse — the red gash of their brittle white beaks opening and closing around nothing at all as a small pack of them wander clumsily over the path, circling, circling around again trying to find shelter under the cliff. They lack the black markings of an emperor bird, of a king, their giant smooth bodies drained of colour like the terrible cold had finally eaten even these winter children alive.

One step onto the path; ice cracks underfoot. A penguin whips its head toward the sound and fear has piled up so bitter and thick in Tooru’s mouth it’s like he’s crying, too, opening and closing, opening and closing, breath coiling in a cloud around him, not making it into his lungs. He can’t move. It feels like he’s been rooted here for a hundred years. There’s nothing but him, and the awful white walls of ice looming over him, and this pitiful bird whose eyes drool red gore down its white-feathered cheeks, blind, as all the other birds are blind.

Another step onto the path; and a thin warble climbs the frozen air. Echoing off the mountain. A cold piercing song he’s been hearing in his sleep for weeks, and he thinks, absurdly, _Tobio would never let his penguins hurt me._

Fear wells up; the white closes in. Tooru has just enough time to rip off his scarf before he throws up into the snow onto the side of the path, crying, crying like birds.

 

 

 

There’s one egg left and he cracks it on top of the remaining steak, hums airily as he piles it all into a bowl. Tooru hopes it's enough for Iwa-chan for now, but it’s not like Iwa-chan was a very picky eater. Must be nice to be so uncivilised sometimes.

The winds have picked up again. It’s a shame he can’t cross the path. He wonders if Kunimi will join them for lunch today.

 

 

 

Tooru arches over Iwaizumi and sweats under his sweatshirt, sweats the chill out of his bones with each desperate grind of his hips. Iwaizumi has both hands braced against his stomach, drawn to how hot he is there, and Tooru is driving himself on Iwaizumi's cock as fast as he can, he needs to come now, he needs to come before the cold seeps back in—

Grey particles shimmer around him, coiling themselves into tendrils to snake around his thighs; high, even higher. Ice so cold they feel like fingers burning right into the skin. He doesn't think Iwaizumi can get any harder inside him but he does, cock pressing deeper, bigger, impossibly bigger, and Tooru _chokes_.

"I love you, Hajime." He’s breathing so hard he thinks he’s drowning.

“He loves you, too,” Iwaizumi moans as more shadows thicken inside him; nails dig deep into Tooru’s belly. The air between them tastes coppery. He’s so close, he’s so _close_.

“He’s— I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.”

Tooru wraps fingers around his own cock, hand slick and frantic. “You’ll always be enough, Hajime,” he growls as he pushes back against— against Iwaizumi. He doesn’t look down; he doesn’t want to look at anything but the bob of Iwaizumi’s throat as he tightens around him, at Iwaizumi’s dark-eyed, half-lidded stare. No light comes from the window and winter sits tight in his chest.

“I’m so hungry,” Iwaizumi says as something cold and wet wraps around and pushes past Tooru’s lips. It tastes of nothing but the chill that clings to his tongue as he swallows it all down, throat convulsing, but he’s good, it’s so good like this.

Lips press softly to his wrist, like the sweet touch of summer, and it’s so achingly gentle that Tooru comes with just that, cold spiking through him, frost spilling down the walls in lines of white.

“I’m just so hungry,” Iwaizumi says, but he does nothing else at all, just keeps his mouth there, maybe a small smile, a boyish grin that Tooru knows so well he can feel the corners turn up against his skin, and he can’t even say a word before everything, green eyes and summer smile and the laugh that sounds like home, falls to cold grey ash, too.

 

 

 

  
_While To— Kageyama's notes have only marginally improved under the mentorship of Oikawa Tooru, it is still possible to decipher some details from the raw data. Most importantly, that the missing penguin colony has apparently been found._

_From there, it is harder to determine exactly what his observations were. Many of them were incomprehensible scribbles and— childish sketches. The ones that were dated seem to intersect with the ice cores that were destroyed, but too much was missing to draw a proper conclusion._

_However, if one was to believe the sketches, and I would personally council against believing Tobio’s anything that hasn’t been passed by me, some aggressive mutation or disease had befallen the colony during the previous winter._

_I have sent a specimen of the grey ash to the labs for analysis and we hope to have more information soon._

— from the testimony of Tsukishima Kei, biologist

 

 

 

Antarctica is unforgiving. This deep inland, where little human contact is ever made, it might as well be a completely different plane of existence. The entire world is condensed into the cold that permeates everything.

Tooru wonders if he'll ever be warm again.

A penguin warbles at him as he steps onto the path. Soft, tuneless little noises that bounce off the glacier and echo inside Tooru's ear. There's only a small cluster of the birds that remain, but they're close enough that he can't avoid walking between them. They're almost as tall as he is, but he can barely duck his eyes for the snow glare that warps everything back at him. He's afraid to run, but he's also afraid to go any faster than he already is; each foot in front of the other is like he's sinking slowly into the ice, like there’ll be nothing left of him by the end.

And then suddenly, the storage shed is right in front of him.

It happens like being underwater — his hand on the door, he's turning the knob, his eyes are freezing with the tears that are pooling in the corners, and it's so, so cold.

"Oikawa-san, you didn't forget about me." The voice warbles. Tooru looks up.

Nothing registers. Everything is red, red and raw. Grey ash moves across the floor, circling, slow. The ruined remains of two men; the form of a man, or a bird, or a thing that was once two things. And so much meat. Tooru forces himself to look and this far into winter, he doesn’t even have Hajime to lean on anymore; it’s just him, and all the courage he’s ever tried to hold fast in his heart. “It’s not you.”

“If it’s not me,” the _thing_ says. “It’s not him either.”

“What was in the ice?” he asks instead. The scientist in him can’t help but rear its ugly head, now, through the haze that’s finally lifted. “What are you?”

It doesn’t answer. Bright blue eyes track him, as if it could watch the very movement of his human muscles under human skin, and _know_. Tooru had seen in the last few weeks how quickly this thing had learned. A tendril snakes out curiously from the writhing mass but stops right before touching him — it truly won’t hurt him. Tooru had learned a few things in this time, too.

He thinks he hears “We are older than the cold and older than the ice,” but he’s closing the door and locking it, and “We are still hungry,” but Tooru has already started the fire.

 

 

 

The winter is long, and his bed is cold, but Oikawa Tooru survives.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [NOW OIKAWA IS LYING ON THE COLD HARD GROUND.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCd8k8OJ6_Q)
> 
> Happy Halloween!


End file.
